Deer butcher getshand from family

Monday

Hairnets and gloves for employees are optional, not required. Nutritional information isn't available. And there's no safety inspection despite the thousands of pounds of raw meat they handle.

They are temporary, mom-and-pop butcher shops that spring up each fall up to meet the soaring demand that accompanies the two-week firearm season for deer.

Last season alone, hunters killed an estimated 66,400 deer in an 11-county swath that hugs the Ohio border and includes all of Beaver, Lawrence and Allegheny counties, according to the state Game Commission.

Some hunters butcher their own kill. Others rely on the area's few full-time professional butcher shops. Many opt for a temporary outfit, such as Ron Sainovich's in Ohioville.

Sainovich reserves two weeks of vacation each fall to slaughter deer in his garages. Hunters show up every day lugging deer carcasses that Sainovich skins, hangs, cuts and packages.

He's not alone. John Stella, food safety supervisor at the state Department of Agriculture's Gibsonia office, estimates there's a handful of makeshift deer butchers that operate in Beaver County each fall.

Some people operate out of their basement, while others use barns, he said.

Stella said the agency doesn't regulate these operations because they provide a service - butchering - not a product, such as venison.

"We don't regulate services," he said,

The agency would inspect temporary butcher shops if they sold venison. However, that's seldom the case, he said.

Stella said he has received calls from hunters asking about the reputation of butchers like Sainovich. He tells them to trust their instincts; if they question the shop then maybe they should go elsewhere.

Such an occurrence seems unlikely at Sainovich's, where customers return year after year, he said.

Sainovich, who has run a deer butchering shop for the past 17 years, cleans each carcass. He then hangs them in a temperature controlled garage to prevent the meat from spoiling or catching bacteria.

Cory Nealon

TIMES STAFF

OHIOVILLE - It's a little after midnight Thursday on Engle Road in Ohioville.

Houses are aglow with soft Christmas lights. The temperature hovers at 16 degrees. The night is still and quiet.

Ron Sainovich, having just arrived home from a late shift at Phoenix Glass Co., Monaca, is standing in one of his garages.

To his left a pile of deerskins slump over the side of a wheelbarrow. Scattered about the floor are seven carcasses - his night's work.

Sainovich, wearing a blood-stained apron over his sweat shirt and jeans, uses an electric hoist to strip a deer of its pelt. Five minutes later, he's cleaning and hosing down the body and hanging it to dry.

He will repeat the process for the next hour or so before going to bed.

Sleep will be brief; he'll rise a few hours later. Joined by his wife, brother and a few friends, he'll put on another apron, grab a five-inch blade, and start butchering some of the hundreds of deer that hunters have left at his house the past 10 days.

Sainovich, 41, began butchering deer for Earl Pratt, of Beaver, when he was 12. He started - as many would-be butchers do - cleaning up and skinning.

"The lowest jobs on the totem pole," he said.

Slowly he learned the trade; where and how to cut and to work quickly.

In 1990, as Pratt gradually retired, Sainovich and his brother, Dan, set up shop at their father's house, about a 1/2 mile from where Sainovich lives today.

After a few years there, Sainovich moved the operation to his home. During this time he developed a reputation as a trusted butcher among local hunters.

"He's excellent at what he does," said Bob Bernhardy, owner of Shooter's Place, Route 51, Fallston.

Sainovich, a modest man, deflects such praise saying there aren't many butchers to compare him to. Would-be competitors have different pursuits.

"Nobody wants to give up hunting," he said.

He also stressed the importance of his crew, which typically includes his wife, Yvonne, his brother and father, and a handful of friends.

If someone failed to show for work, the result could be disastrous, Sainovich said. Deer could rot, leaving hunter's upset and his reputation irrevocably damaged.

Yvonne, a native of East Liverpool, Ohio, was drafted into the operation when she married Ron 19 years ago.

"I wasn't really a farmer. I'm still not. This is about as farm as I'm going to be," she joked.

Days are long; Sainovich said he typically wakes up at 5:30 a.m., begins butchering a few hours later and works until 12:30 a.m.

Despite the long hours, the group is mostly cheerful, making wisecracks about family members, discussing Christmas plans.

BUTCHERING PROCESS

The butchering process at Sainovich's begins in a garage detached from his house. After severing the animal's head and removing its skin, Sainovich hangs the carcass by its back legs from a pulley system.

It'll stay there for a day or two to dry out. The garage is in effect a walk-in cooler. Sainovich keeps the temperature at 35 degrees to ensure that carcasses stiffen - not freeze - to make them easier to cut.

When ready, he loads the carcasses on a cart and wheels them into another garage - the butcher's shop.

The unheated room contains a rectangular island of stainless steel butcher blocks. Holiday music plays softly from radio that sits near a half-full pot of coffee. A spotted black and white cat slinks around the floor.

Using a slightly curved blade, Sainovich hacks through the rear leg of a carcass. The straining, muscled flesh looks more like a meal for Fred Flintstone than the lean, succulent venison that hunters covet.

Sainovich flips on a table saw and quickly shears off a few loins. He tosses them into a bucket on the other side blocks, where Yvonne wraps them in paper and labels them to denote the hunter.

Sainovich then works around the bone. He tosses scraps of meat into bucket and the fat and bone into a waist-high garbage can.

The meat scraps are twice run through a gurgling, steel grinder, then packed into sausage-maker, which spits it into one-pound plastic bags.

Just after placing the meat - neatly arranged on a tray - into a freezer, Sainovich begins cutting another carcass.